The Storyville Club in Boston was owned by George Wein. Wein heard that the Brubeck Quartet had drawn the crowds over on the west coast so he was eager to employ them, even though they were not yet in the forefront of jazz.Brubeck has always been controversial for different reasons. Cecil Taylor said: ‘When Brubeck opened in 1951 in New York I was very impressed with the depth and texture of his harmony, which had more notes in it than anyone else's that I had ever heard. It also had a rhythmical movement that I found exciting’. It was the break into the College circuits that enabled the quartet to break through. Much of Brubeck’s playing was tinged with elements of classical music and that charmed college students who wanted some cerebral appeal. As the 1950s developed and the Brubeck Quartet became very popular critical interest decreased.

The present CDs were recorded by radio stations at the beginning of the quartet’s life and some of the tracks were issued on LP by Columbia. The radio announcers try for some sophisticated intros and are wryly amusing but the important aspect is that the music is reasonably well recorded.

The main interest on the CDs is Paul Desmond. Desmond is difficult to listen to. Difficult because he is so brilliant. The way that melodies are unfurled from his brain in a seemingly relaxed and effortless way is beguiling. He is difficult because it is easy to mistake his facility and technical mastery with lack of real thought. His urbane almost detached stance could seem almost too cool. The way he structured his thoughts and built his solos pleased both intellectDoug Ramsey, who wrote a marvellous biography of Desmond, says about Desmond’s work at Storyville. ‘He was approaching his goal of a subconscious flow of ideas unimpeded by mechanical considerations. On ‘You Go To My Head’ he and Brubeck play what amounts to a duet. Lloyd Davis, who replaced Herb Barman, is drumming with brushes so softly in the background that he's more felt than heard. ……….. The eight-minute performance is a distillation of the empathy between Desmond and Brubeck, a rare case of a recording capturing their intuitive interaction at its zenith. Desmond plays the first four bars of the song with slight variation, then moves through two choruses of improvised melody enhanced by his allusions to other music. In the course of building the second chorus of his solo, he refers with varying degrees of subtlety to ‘Birks Works’, ‘Your Red Wagon’, “The Boy Next Door’, ‘A Fine Romance’, ‘Ray’s Idea’, and Cool Blues’. Listing these components, I run the risk of implying triteness, but the solo is a profound piece of music-making. Desmond establishes a poignancy that Brubeck continues in his soul with harmonic substitutions so appropriate to the atmosphere of the unfolding story that Desmond is moved to softly say ‘Yeah,’ a word that among jazz musician speaks volumes of approval. He re-enters to finish with twenty four bars of pure hand in glove invention with Brubeck, highlighted by his series of stepwise modulations and a coda that he ends on a mysterious low minor second. it is one of the supreme moments of Brubeck's and Desmond’s discography. His solo on ‘You Go To My Head’ is one of the few that Desmond was willing in later years to acknowledge as a success.'

There is a great deal to admire about the three CDs. The quartet is young, the players are fresh and their invention is virile. Doug Ramsey is right: the solo on ‘You Go To My Head’ is remarkably inventive. There are other solos almost as good and they will all make you re-evaluate the extraordinary Desmond.Reviewed by Jack Kenny

Jazz Views is proud to be assosciated with the Watermill Inn & Brewery